


get on your wooden horse: this is a ride, not a fight

by folkloricfeel



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 10:45:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2385551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/folkloricfeel/pseuds/folkloricfeel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer helps Hanna get ready for another funeral. Includes major spoilers for 5x12. Somewhere at the intersection between character study and romantic friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	get on your wooden horse: this is a ride, not a fight

Hanna texts an hour and a half before the funeral to ask if she can come over to borrow a dress. She says it’s because they’ve done this so many times now that she wouldn’t be caught dead in last year’s funeral dress - tacking on a smiley sticking out its tongue at the unintentional pun - but Spencer knows there’s a pile of black clothes, brand-new and half of them still with the tags on, tossed haphazardly on the floor of Hanna’s closet.

She texts back, _come on over, i’m sure melissa left some old dresses behind out in the barn_ anyway.

*

“So then, can you believe, Hackett calls Bridget Wu down to the office in the middle of third period, and she’s so trashed she makes it three steps out the door before nosediving right into the lockers,” Hanna says as Spencer pulls the zipper up the back of an old recital dress of Melissa’s. “I may not be one to talk here, but even I know you shouldn’t wear five-inch Jimmy Choos if you’re going to mix your day drinking with wet floor tile.” Her voice is light, attempting its best approximation of flippancy, but Spencer can see in the mirror reflection just how tired Hanna’s eyes are.

(She doesn’t know if her own eyes look tired, she realizes. She doesn’t remember what they look like when they’re not anymore.) 

“Ew, gross, what’s up with the shoulders on this one?” Hanna scowls into the mirror and tugs at the hemline. “It looks like 2005-soccer-mom threw up all over it.” 

“Yeah, well, you’re the one turning to my sister’s fashion sense in your time of need,” Spencer replies. “I’m not the one who should be held accountable.”

“Point taken,” Hanna says, shrugging herself out of the dress after Spencer unzips her. “Have you heard anything from Melissa yet?”

“Nothing,” Spencer says, catching the dress as Hanna tosses it to her and trading it for another one for her to try on. 

(She feels the instinct to tag on some obligatory quip like, _you know Melissa, though, she’s probably sipping tea in some posh cafe and feeling smug about leaving us all hanging on the words of her dramatic exit_ \- except it’s not only not accurate in this case because of the circumstances, but because she doesn’t. Know Melissa, that is. Melissa is the same sister who used to scream at their parents and stomp her feet for letting Spencer play with her old Barbies and getting their combs tangled in their hair, the same sister who used to turn babysitting sessions on Friday nights into cutthroat games of hide-and-seek - she still looks exactly like the same old Melissa every time Spencer watches that video, and that’s the terrifying thing, because for the first time in all of this, Spencer doesn’t think she knows the person at all who’s staring back at her through the other side of the screen.

There was a time where Hanna might have offered up a, _don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll call soon_ to make the knots in her eyebrows slacken a little, or rolled her eyes and added on an, _or else poof back into your kitchen with an evil cackle and a cloud of green smoke_ to make her stifle a laugh. 

But that time isn’t now, not today. They’re too tired for that. 

So Hanna just catches Spencer’s hand instead when it comes to rest on her shoulder after helping her zip the next dress, and Spencer gets the message, anyway.)

“Hey, speaking of Hackett’s office,” Spencer says, “what did he want with you the other day while we were in English?” The subject change doesn’t lighten the mood as much as intended, because the thought of any of their names being called over the intercom is enough to set off panic flares behind her eyes these days.

Hanna’s arms shrink up against the sides of her dress. “Nothing important,” she says, in a way that makes Spencer’s mind jump to worst-case scenarios. “He just thought - I don’t know, he thought I did a thing I didn’t do, whatever.”

“Wait, this isn’t about the Zack thing or anything, is it?” Spencer feels the familiar lightheaded rush washing over her of her brain starting to spiral. “You haven’t gotten any texts since - I mean, now that Mona’s - ”

“Calm down, Spence,” Hanna says, and Spencer winces at the way Hanna bites her lip when she says Mona’s name, because fuck. She’s supposed to be helping a friend here, not careening into mystery-solving mode.

(There is something she can’t put her finger on that she’s always loved a little more than she should about these times, the times when Hanna bursts into her room declaring it’s Friday night and everything in her own closet sucks and can she borrow that red skirt of Spencer’s with the slit up the side, pretty pretty please, the times when she calls Spencer to come over and help her tear through her wardrobe and throw out every piece of clothing Caleb’s ever seen her in. Maybe it’s because those are the moments she can let go of the wheel of this 24/7 CSI investigation and just be a normal teenager lounging on the bed helping her friend get ready for a date, but it’s more than that, because she has those moments - however rarely they come anymore - with Aria and Emily too.

It’s different because in these moments, with Hanna, she doesn’t have to be the leader of a crime scene investigation, and the only answers Hanna ever asks for are whether the blue cardigan or the green one looks best with that dress. 

She and Hanna don’t get a lot of moments like this, is the thing. It’s easier when they’re with Caleb or Toby, because then they have a frame of reference for each other that isn’t Ali-centric or “try not to die today.” But when it’s the four of them, Aria can detach herself from it all in a way she’ll never stop being a little jealous of, and Emily’s tangled up in everything in ways she knows it would be insensitive to even pretend to understand, which leaves the two of them as something like co-workers working on the same project: the same hellish, neverending, axe-murdering-because-hey-it’s-Tuesday project, passing each other’s cubicle twenty times a day but emailing back and forth with questions, never finding the time to stop and say hello.)

“Sorry,” Spencer says, “I didn’t mean to - ”

“I know,” Hanna says, and smiles, or tries to. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t anything like that. It’s just, you know how we got scores back for the SCT last week - ”

“S - _A_ \- T, Han - ”

“Whatever, I know what the damn thing is, Caleb already corrected me once, okay,” Hanna sighs, and her voice gets quieter. “Hackett called me down to his office because I guess I did well enough on it he was convinced I cheated.”

Spencer’s eyebrows raise. “How well is well enough?”

Hanna hesitates. “Well enough that I’m applying to your kind of school now, I guess.”

“Not my kind of school anymore,” Spencer says. She sits down on the bed and tries to block out the recitative of _the Committee regrets to inform you that we are unable to offer you a place in our program_ before it starts ringing in her ears again. “Besides, it’s not looking optimistic for any of us to make it to graduation day at the moment, is it.”

(She winces, again, at her choice of words, but Hanna doesn’t seem to blink; she wonders at what point you become desensitized enough you can do this without feeling like you’ve forgotten how to breathe.)

“Really?” Hanna asks, waving a hand in front of her face. “Come on, Spence, you can do better than that. No, ‘what, did you start making patterns with the little bubbles on the sheet and get lucky’? No stealing the school’s security footage to figure out who -A is today?”

“What?” Spencer asks, snapping back to the moment.

“I mean, you’re always the one correcting my grammar and logistics and all that stuff,” Hanna shrugs, “I figured you’d have something to say about the news.”

“Lin _guis_ tics,” Spencer says, “and you don’t really _correct_ someone’s linguistics, that’s not technically what the word means - ”

“Told you so,” Hanna smirks, and turns back to the mirror, pushing her chest up against the neckline of the dress.

(She doesn’t - it’s not like it’s mean-spirited or anything, she corrects everyone’s grammar out of habit or neuroticism, or both. It’s part of being The Smart Girl; she’s pretty sure people would give her dirty looks if she _didn’t_ do it at this point. If she does it to Hanna more often, it’s because she’s The Smart Girl and Hanna’s The Ditzy One and there is a little voice whispering from Spencer’s shoulder - a part of being a Hastings, she supposes - that is always reminding her the importance of keeping up expected appearances.

It doesn’t mean that Hanna isn’t one of the smartest people she knows, SAT scores or not.)

“Can you even imagine how crazy that would’ve been, though?” Hanna smooths her hands over the front of her dress and flips her hair over one shoulder. “Me being some secret genius, us meeting in AP classes the first day of freshman year and leading the academic decathlon team to victory together in some down-to-the-wire upset, instead of - well, you know.”

“Calm down there, Elle Woods,” Spencer says, chuckling, fidgeting with the black thread starting to fray at the sleeve of her dress.

“Nah, that’d be too crazy,” Hanna waves her hand. “Caleb’s not the Emmett type, anyway. You, though, are totally the Vivian here.”

“Am not!” Spencer snaps the loose piece of thread at the hem and tosses it in Hanna’s direction in mock indignation. “Listen, I might be a Hastings, but I’m not _that_ stuck up.”

“But you are that good of a friend,” Hanna says, and smiles. There’s not enough happiness in the expression to compete with the other emotions weighing down her eyes, but the fondness in her voice makes up for it. Spencer stands to step behind Hanna at the mirror, smiling back at their reflections.

“Thanks,” she says, “and it’s not crazy at all. You know that.”

“Yeah, right, whatever you say,” she says, and her eyes crinkle as she scoffs, and for just a second, there’s enough happiness to win out. “So: how do I look?”

(How do you tell your best friend how she looks when she’s getting ready for her best friend’s funeral, though? How do you dress her up to the nines and send her off to face the church bell tolls and statements of eulogy as they blur together with the lingering memories of all the times said best friend has tried to kill you both? How do you face down the fact that there’s still someone out there lurking around the next corner who wants you dead, no matter how many times you do this?

Heartbroken is how she looks. Terrified. Lost and swallowed alive by the girl staring back at her in the mirror. On the verge of remembering how to breathe. 

Tired. So tired. They’re all so tired these days.)

“You look absolutely beautiful, Han,” Spencer says, because it’s true. “Now come on, we said we’d meet everyone there beforehand and it’s already quarter ‘til.” She leans over to kiss the back of Hanna’s head before reaching for her purse on edge of the bed.

Hanna grabs for her hand and says, “thanks,” which Spencer highly suspects has very little to do with the dress, and Spencer squeezes back her silent thanks, too.


End file.
